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The Story:
I had a Asus P4S800D mainboard with P4 3.0 Ghz and 1 Gb RAM (Twinmos PC3200 DDR dual-kit). Graphics card is a Palit 6600 128Mb and PSU is Tt480W. I play BF2 with mid/high video settings since August without any major problems with this config. Only occasionaly I experienced some freezes where I needed to reset the pc, but it occurred a few times after several hours of gameplay and I didnt worried too much about it. Like most of BF2 players I got some graphics stutter during the first few seconds of newly started maps, which I thought is caused by my 1 Gb RAM and so I decided to upgrade my RAM to 2 Gb. I bought another pair of Twinmos dual kit sticks which are identical with my first pair of sticks and installed on the mobo. I started the system and everything seemed fine, xpsp2 run stable, a lot of hardware test utilities reported everything is ok, and I launched the BF2...
First BSOD screen appeared right after a couple of minutes.. It reported a nv4_mini.sys error.. System restart, BF2 launch, and opppss, another BSOD again, this time saying IRQ_LESS etc.. Tweaking with video settings, then with BIOS settings, trying out every possible combination with no avail.. All kinds of BSOD error messages appeared. Sometimes I was able to enter a multi or singleplayer map, even to play a couple of minutes, but then bang, it crashed again and again. Sometimes video just freezed with sound loops, sometimes it gave a BSOD. I updated the NVidia driver with the most recent one, uninstalled and re-installed BF2, SF and 1.12 patch again and again, cleaned the cache folder several times, disabled the dual channel, disabled hyperthreading and tons of other tweaks with no avail. It insisted on crashing.
And then came my big discovery !!!
Guess what has totally cured the phenomenon?..
Solution:
I increased DDR voltages on the mainboard!!!..
As you may know default DDR400 voltage standard is 2.5V, but many branded sticks are labeled with slightly higher voltage levels. I think most of the motherboards currently on the market do not provide enough voltage to the RAM banks for some reason. This problem is especially remarkable if *ALL* RAM slots are occupied, a situation which is well known for causing problems on many mobos. My Twinmos sticks run ideally on 2.6V according to the manufacturer. I assumed that the "auto" setting of the BIOS is 2.5V and so I first tried the 2.55V setting, no change.. Then with 2.65V, I was able to play a multiplayer map as long as 10 minutes until it crashed again. With 2.75V setting, I played longer and didn't get a BSOD or hard freeze but it only crashed to desktop. So my last choice was the 2.85V and voila, BF2 runs rock solid since then. Since two days I play hours long on several servers without any single stutter, btw I am also able to run the game in full high settings now. Thanks to 2 Gb RAM, it even runs much more smoother than before and it doesnt crash anymore.
Conclusion:
If you have Crash-to-desktop's, simple video lockups or even BSOD's during gameplay and no other known solution did help you, then consider this seriously.
I had a Asus P4S800D mainboard with P4 3.0 Ghz and 1 Gb RAM (Twinmos PC3200 DDR dual-kit). Graphics card is a Palit 6600 128Mb and PSU is Tt480W. I play BF2 with mid/high video settings since August without any major problems with this config. Only occasionaly I experienced some freezes where I needed to reset the pc, but it occurred a few times after several hours of gameplay and I didnt worried too much about it. Like most of BF2 players I got some graphics stutter during the first few seconds of newly started maps, which I thought is caused by my 1 Gb RAM and so I decided to upgrade my RAM to 2 Gb. I bought another pair of Twinmos dual kit sticks which are identical with my first pair of sticks and installed on the mobo. I started the system and everything seemed fine, xpsp2 run stable, a lot of hardware test utilities reported everything is ok, and I launched the BF2...
First BSOD screen appeared right after a couple of minutes.. It reported a nv4_mini.sys error.. System restart, BF2 launch, and opppss, another BSOD again, this time saying IRQ_LESS etc.. Tweaking with video settings, then with BIOS settings, trying out every possible combination with no avail.. All kinds of BSOD error messages appeared. Sometimes I was able to enter a multi or singleplayer map, even to play a couple of minutes, but then bang, it crashed again and again. Sometimes video just freezed with sound loops, sometimes it gave a BSOD. I updated the NVidia driver with the most recent one, uninstalled and re-installed BF2, SF and 1.12 patch again and again, cleaned the cache folder several times, disabled the dual channel, disabled hyperthreading and tons of other tweaks with no avail. It insisted on crashing.
And then came my big discovery !!!
Guess what has totally cured the phenomenon?..
Solution:
I increased DDR voltages on the mainboard!!!..
As you may know default DDR400 voltage standard is 2.5V, but many branded sticks are labeled with slightly higher voltage levels. I think most of the motherboards currently on the market do not provide enough voltage to the RAM banks for some reason. This problem is especially remarkable if *ALL* RAM slots are occupied, a situation which is well known for causing problems on many mobos. My Twinmos sticks run ideally on 2.6V according to the manufacturer. I assumed that the "auto" setting of the BIOS is 2.5V and so I first tried the 2.55V setting, no change.. Then with 2.65V, I was able to play a multiplayer map as long as 10 minutes until it crashed again. With 2.75V setting, I played longer and didn't get a BSOD or hard freeze but it only crashed to desktop. So my last choice was the 2.85V and voila, BF2 runs rock solid since then. Since two days I play hours long on several servers without any single stutter, btw I am also able to run the game in full high settings now. Thanks to 2 Gb RAM, it even runs much more smoother than before and it doesnt crash anymore.
Conclusion:
If you have Crash-to-desktop's, simple video lockups or even BSOD's during gameplay and no other known solution did help you, then consider this seriously.
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